Saturday, December 19, 2009

Film Review: Avatar (2009)

Avatar is the 3-D, 22nd century version of Dances with Wolves with blue people. Same use of Noble Savage stereotypes, same white man coming to save the day, same indigenous embracing of the white man as their leader, same story of Europeans destroying indigenous civilizations because of greed, same directorial arrogance.

Yes, it looks cool. But the story is not only a joke, it's borderline offensive. Theoretically, viewers could take this movie and realize we should be more environmentally friendly and treat indigenous people better. But in reality, they are going to watch this movie and then wish we had these weapons to kill brown people in the Middle East.

Technically interesting, but a bad movie.